Kiernan Hughes-Mason will lead Tower Hamlets for the first time when they take on Hackney Wick in their first pre-season friendly on July 11.

And the 31-year-old former Millwall, Cheltenham and Grimsby striker is looking forward to the challenge at the Thurlow Nunn League Division One South club.

"This being my first pre-season as a first-team manager, we decided to start again from scratch and rebuild not just the team but also the football club," he said.

"We’ve made a new club website and we also have a new chairman, Samiul Ahmed, who took over the club at the back end of last season.

"Pre-season has been eventful. We’ve had a number of new players to look at, we’ve also signed a core group of players that we trust.

"We want to be competitive this season and really push ourselves and finish as high up the table as we can, our target is a top-five finish as that would get us into the play-off spots."

Hughes-Mason has Connor French as his assistant manager, with Tunde Ogungbadero, Sian Fitzpatrick - the head coach and manager of Millwall Lionesses Academy - and Lucia Abbate, lead coach at MK Dons Academy, as first-team coaches and Olga Pazwa and Eloise Da Costa as physios.

Hamlets will play home fixtures at Mile End Stadium but are due to face league rivals Hackney Wick at the New River Sports Centre on Tuesday and have further pre-season friendlies scheduled at Barking (July 18) and Farleigh Rovers (July 22), while seeking another game on July 25 or 26 before meeting SC Thamesmead (July 29).

They are due to start the new league season with a trip to Basildon Town on August 2 (7.45pm) and have been drawn away to Snodland Town in the first qualifying round of the FA Vase on August 26.

For more details see their website https://www.towerhamletsfc.london